BEIJING - China's mobile phone shipments stood at 227 million units in the first eight months of the year, up 12.3 percent year-on-year, according to data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology.

In August, the country's mobile phone shipments dropped 9.7 percent year-on-year to reach 24.3 million units, said the CAICT, a research institute under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

A total of 57 new models were released last month, up 50 percent from a year earlier, the data showed.

The country's domestic brands continued to dominate mobile phone shipments in August. Their shipments hit 22.8 million units, making up 93.8 percent of the total shipments.

In the January-August period, shipments by domestic brands went up 10.6 percent year-on-year to top 204 million units, according to the CAICT.